For more than three decades, Lean Production Systems have been successfully utilized and deployed globally to transform the operations of all types of companies, small, large, private and public.  Originally developed and popularized by Toyota, lean has been the operational excellence tool of choice for companies wanting to reduce cost, free up working capital and grow organically.  For those companies that have reaped the benefits of lean for the past several years, what is the next frontier?

Lean transformation is a never ending journey and we expand our line of sight beyond manufacturing operations, logistics and distribution.  Many companies are beginning to deploy lean techniques in transactional processes using business process kaizen to reduce lead time and eliminate waste.  However, many of these efforts in transactional areas are sub-optimized and are happening in functional silos when they can and should be applied to all areas of selling, general and administrative expense (SG&A) including: finance, human resources, sales, marketing and customer service.

The most effective way to deploy lean enterprise-wide is through end-to-end value stream management. An end-to-end value stream contains many value streams including product development and commercialization, marketing and sales, fulfillment, and after-market service to name a few.  Each end-to-end value stream is aligned to specific values that a different set of customers want.  For instance, a company can have one end-to-end value stream serving specialty customers and another end-to-end value stream serving retail customers.   Basically, stratified value stream management approaches allow you to align specific offerings and service strategies specifically to varying customer needs.

If you have a chance, check out a recent webinar we developed on stratified fulfillment value streams.   There will be more information coming on how to define, implement, and manage end-to-end value streams to identify waste opportunities and maximize customer satisfaction.